A longtime Sewickley funeral home is moving business a few miles away.
Services at the R.D. Cole Funeral Home at 328 Beaver St. will cease Sept. 26 and the business will reopen under the same name at 1316 Fourth Ave. in Coraopolis the following day.
The Beaver Street building is expected to be demolished to make room for new development by owner and Sewickley resident Bob Lewis, founder of Orbital Engineering.
Messages left with the company were not returned at press time.
Richard Cole II sold the property at 328 Beaver St. earlier this year to CABO Real Estate LLC for $1.5 million, according to Allegheny County property records.
The Cole family owned the property for nearly 70 years.
The building was a former home converted to the William E. Gray Funeral Home in 1931.
It became the Richard D. Cole Funeral Home in January 1963 following Gray’s retirement. It was run by Dick Cole until his death in 1977.
His widow, Jeri Cole, kept things going with the assistance of several close friends including Jim Hughes, who formally took over in 2003 upon Mrs. Cole’s passing.
Hughes retired and passed the business on to the current owner John Schwartzmiller around the start of this year.
Schwartzmiller, who owns two other funeral homes in the Pittsburgh area, pledged to keep the R.D. Cole Funeral Home name and its quality of service.
“(Hughes)’ been a professional colleague of mine my entire professional life,” Schwartzmiller said. “We worked it out.”
He said the lease on the Beaver Street property was expected to be longer than September, but notice was given to leave by the end of the month.
“We only had 47 days to do what we did, and it kind of worked out,” Schwartzmiller said. “We want people to know that it wasn’t us that decided to pull out of here and drop this building. The new owner can do whatever he wants.”
They are moving into a shared space with the Anthony J. Sanvito Funeral Home in Coraopolis.
Schwartzmiller said the Sanvito family are also colleagues and highly professional.
“We’ll take care of the people from Sewickley as we did when we owned the business over there,” Schwartzmiller said. “We’ve got a long history of funeral service, no doubt.”
The Schwartzmiller family has been in the funeral business since 1886.
They own and operate Anthony G. Staab Funeral Home Inc. in Pittsburgh’s West End and Brusco-Napier Funeral Service in Beechview.
Schwartzmiller is assisted by his wife, Rachel, daughter Alexis, son, Ben, and staffers Joshua Diulus, Colleen Kelley Whalen and James Crable.
The R.D. Cole Funeral Home performs between 40 and 50 services a year. Combined with the other two funeral homes, Schwartzmiller anticipates having 150 services by year’s end.
“As far as the business itself, it has a rich history,” Schwartzmiller said. “There’s a lot of people that have prearranged a lot of services through the funeral home. We intend to take care of them as if we were in the old building. Nothing’s going to change on anybody’s arrangements.
“As far as the move goes, we’re talking, geographically, 2.8 miles.”
Anyone with concerns about their arrangements or have at-need services should call the funeral home at 412-741-4334.
Michael DiVittorio is a TribLive reporter covering general news in Western Pennsylvania, with a penchant for festivals and food. He can be reached at mdivittorio@triblive.com.